Why Roger Lives
by Dlvvanzor
Summary: Growing up, all Quillsh spoke of- the fantasy he told me about every night in our shared bedroom- was his dream of starting an orphanage that treated kids better than Meadow Brooks treated US. Everyone else laughed. Not me. Roger POV oneshot


**Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note.**

**A/N: Happy death day, Ukita! Have... a fic that doesn't even mention you? XD**

**So, I totally got the second and third Death Note soundtrack. Epic win~!**

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**Roger POV**

Growing up, just about all Quillsh Wammy spoke of- the fantasy he told me about every night in our shared bedroom- was his innocent dream of starting an orphanage that treated kids better than Meadow Brooks treated _us_. Everyone else laughed. Not me.

Because I have always known that Quillsh was a genius. In fact, I figured it out before teachers, peers, tests, and even Quillsh himself. I _knew_ that he was brilliant long before I even really understood what it meant to call someone brilliant. He was quiet, charismatic when he _did _speak, bright, attractive, reserved, and polite. I knew that he would be able to do whatever he wanted to do with his life. That there was simply nothing about him that would hold him back.

At the same time, I had also always known that I would never really be able to do much in my life. Nothing that mattered, at any rate. _I_ was emotional, awkward, loud, easily frustrated, and harsh. Still am. Those traits are good for nothing, and _I_ was good for nothing.

Unless, of course, I could somehow help my best friend get _his_ dream.

We grew up with this perfect image in our heads- Quillsh knew exactly how it would be, and though the details changed and improved with the realism that comes with age, the grand idea remained the same. He knew every detail, from the giant mosaic of the Garden of Eden on the floor to the huge, gorgeous stained-glass ceiling in the entrance room. He drew it again and again, to the point where, when I saw him drawing, I could immediately identify what room it was depicting. To the point where his pencil-holding fingers twitched in his sleep as if he were drawing.

He was ridiculed for it, to neither of our surprise. For a long, long time, I was the only one who believed that it would happen. Even when _Quillsh_ couldn't believe. I guess I just knew that it would happen, or knew that Quillsh simply _wouldn't_ fail.

I remember one day in particular. We were ten, and Quillsh had just finished his first full floor plan- all three levels, the bell tower, the grounds, even the fence _around_ the grounds, as well as every room in the building. It was to specialize in genius orphans, which was a new development, and to see to their education and well-being. Quillsh had been caught drawing with a T-square and drafting tools on the floor of the dingy common room and laughed out of it.

He came to me, fighting tears, and crumpled up his blueprint. He threw it into the wall and announced that his idea was stupid and that he was done with it. That it was time to focus on what job he was going to get, and how he was now thinking about going into business.

I watched him until he was done speaking, ignoring the fact that he would be the greatest businessman to ever exist if he went that route, and picked up his drawing. I uncrumpled it and handed it back to him.

"I'll help," I told him.

Red-eyed, snot-nosed, and embarrassed, he smiled.

When he was twelve, he invented something that I couldn't even describe or understand. He patented it and the money began to pour in. Meadow Brooks took some of it, but there was still enough for Quillsh to apply for and win emancipation at sixteen and leave. The night he told me he was leaving, I thought he only meant _him_, and I mentally resigned myself to being completely alone in this place that I hated. Quillsh was my only friend, and the only one who didn't seem to find me as annoying as even _I_ found me. I should have known better, though. Quillsh was nothing if not loyal. And, of course, brilliant. He took me with him, and we found a modestly-priced house.

In that house, Quillsh began to plan more intensely than he ever had before. He wouldn't leave his room for days on end; I had to bring him food if I wanted him to eat something. I became very adept at making tea at temperatures that were safe for how quickly he would chug it down, so as not to be disturbed for long. No matter how busy he was, though, whenever I brought him something, he would pause, look at me, smile, and thank me.

I would always answer, "Glad I can help."

There was more to plan, now that this was actually happening. Where he would get the students from. How he would make the place legal and yet completely secret. How he could test applying students to find out if they were smart enough for an institution for geniuses. How he could convince people to trust him despite the fact that he was sixteen. How many employees he would need in relation to how many students he could have at once. Security. How to screen the teachers and staff so that he could be sure they weren't pedophiles or murderers. Where to actually _put_ the orphanage. Plumbing. Heating. Gas. It all had to be top-secret, so he couldn't send these projects out to professionals. He had to do it all himself. And he did.

In four months.

How he worked it all out, I'll never know. How he was able to force himself to sit at that desk day in and day out, often falling asleep right on his work. How he was often so distracted that, when I brought him something to eat, it sat there until hunger made him too weak to work, at which point he bolted it down and returned to what he was doing.

Then, one day, he actually _left_ his office, grabbed me, hugged me, and announced that construction was to start the next day. He left the house for the first time in four months. We went out for Earl Gray tea and insect books.

During the Kira case, he would call me often. He calculated the time difference between England and Japan. Every other night or so, sometimes every night, he would call me on a secure line and ask how the children were doing. I would tell him whatever he wanted to know- about how Linda had recreated the Mona Lisa or how Igloo was refusing to come out of his igloo again- and then ask him how the Kira case was going. He would tell me. Completely classified information, and he still told me, because he knew I would never, ever tell anyone else. L would have been livid had he ever found out.

But Quillsh had to talk to someone. He and L had the beloved mentor/beloved student relationship. The mentor knows everything about the student, and the student knows almost nothing about the mentor except for what he picks up over time. Quillsh and L were close, but L was beyond even Quillsh's intellectual abilities. He was simply too smart and, more prevalently, too busy. He operated on a different level than Quillsh, not to mention the age difference that would necessarily put distance between them. He had to save the world, and he didn't have time for a heart-to-heart with Quillsh.

Some nights, Quillsh would call me with tears in his voice and, I can only assume, his eyes. I would ask him what was wrong and he would whisper, "What have I done?"

He blamed himself for many things. L was a first-generation Wammy student, so he grew up with the curriculum that Quillsh created. Many of the other students of that generation just left as soon as possible to devote their lives to flipping burgers. Flipping burgers is a perfectly honorable career, but it is not, in the opinion of Quillsh, the fullest potential that these children could have reached. A few of the other students ran away, and it was this, more than the dropouts, that made Quillsh realize that Wammy's House was no better than Meadow Brooks.

He wanted to shut down the orphanage after that, and I almost agreed.

But then I realized and pointed out that L seemed fine. At thirteen, he had started out as L, completely of his own volition. Quillsh latched on to this chance and, upon finding out that young L had applied standards to himself additional to those of the House, Quillsh allowed _him_ to create the new curriculum.

That one was worse.

L applied to the other students what he had applied to himself, and it spiraled out of control. As hard as Quillsh and I tried, we could not get it though the children's heads that we weren't _only_ after an heir to the increasingly prestigious title of L. They all self-destructed, imploded under the pressure.

Quillsh blames, not L, but _himself_, because he is the one who gave a socially-crippled super-genius the responsibility of creating the curriculum, just because he didn't want to give up Wammy's.

After all this happened, he revamped the House again, making it into what it is today. His dream has finally succeeded: he has created a healthy atmosphere for genius children to grow up and be whatever they want to be, with an _option_ of competing to be L's heir. Near and Mello take this rather obsessively, of course, but that is simply their personalities.

But Quillsh still weeps for A's suicide. For B's rampage. For C's dysfunction. For K's misunderstanding. And he blames himself for all of these things.

About these things and others, he called me every night.

Until one night, when he never called me again.

It was that which told me he was dead. Long before I received that terrible text message, informing me that the person who means more to me than anyone had been killed by Kira, I knew it. Because he simply would not have gone that long without calling me, or getting someone to contact me and say he was alive.

And that's why, despite the fact that I hate children, I run an orphanage. Because, dammit, I might be useless. I might be stupid. I might be a crabby old man who could never even _dream_ of competing with someone like Quillsh Wammy.

But I promised my best friend I'd help him, and I'll do it until the day I die.


End file.
